Germany's Federal Budget: How €490 Billion is Spent (GERMANY)

Every year the German Bundestag passes a federal budget (Bundeshaushalt) that determines how the federal government will raise and spend money. The figures used throughout this lesson are drawn from the enacted 2024 federal budget (Haushaltsgesetz 2024, adopted February 2024), which set spending authority at approximately €476.8 billion [1][2]. (The lesson title refers to €490 billion, which is the approximate total of the 2025 draft budget — Regierungsentwurf July 2024; enacted 2024 figures are used throughout the body text as they are more precise.) Where 2025 figures are cited, they are taken from the draft (Regierungsentwurf, July 2024) and are clearly labelled as such; the 2025 budget had not yet been enacted at the time this lesson was written. Readers consulting this material after 2024 should verify current figures at bundeshaushalt.de, as enacted amounts may differ from the draft projections cited here.

Historical note: This lesson uses 2024 enacted data and the July 2024 draft for 2025 as its primary reference point. All figures should be treated as a snapshot of that period, not as current law.

What counts as 'the federal budget'?#

The federal budget (Kernhaushalt) covers only the Bund — not the 16 Länder and not the more than 10,000 municipalities. Germany is a federal state, so roughly half of all public spending happens outside this figure, at the state and local levels. When you read that Germany's 'total public expenditure' is close to €1.9 trillion, that number from Destatis covers Bund + Länder + Gemeinden + Sozialversicherungen combined, on a national accounts basis [3].

The biggest single line item: Arbeit und Soziales#

The largest Einzelplan (departmental budget) is consistently Einzelplan 11 — Bundesministerium für Arbeit und Soziales (BMAS). In the enacted 2024 budget it carried roughly €175.7 billion, and the 2025 draft (Regierungsentwurf, July 2024) raises it to around €179.3 billion, which is about 37 percent of the enacted 2024 federal budget total of €476.8 billion (€175.7B ÷ €476.8B ≈ 36.8%, rounded to 37 %) [1]. It is important to understand what this figure represents: it is not the administrative operating budget of the BMAS ministry itself, which is a small fraction of that total. The overwhelming majority of Einzelplan 11 consists of statutory transfer payments — above all the federal subsidy to the statutory pension insurance (Zuschuss zur gesetzlichen Rentenversicherung, roughly €116.6 billion in 2024), plus the Bürgergeld (formerly Arbeitslosengeld II), Grundsicherung im Alter, and labour-market integration programmes. These are legally mandated entitlement transfers, not discretionary ministry spending. Treating the €175.7 billion as a measure of 'how much the BMAS spends on running itself' would be a fundamental misreading of the budget structure.

The next four biggest spenders (2024 enacted / 2025 draft)#

• Verteidigung (Einzelplan 14, BMVg): about €51.8 billion in 2024 (enacted) rising to roughly €53.3 billion in the 2025 draft, plus drawdowns from the €100 billion Sondervermögen Bundeswehr approved in 2022 [1][4].
• Bundesschuld / Zinsen (Einzelplan 32): debt-service interest is projected at €37.4 billion in the 2025 draft, up from a pandemic low of under €4 billion in 2021 [1]. This is the single most volatile line — it moves with ECB interest rates.
• Verkehr und digitale Infrastruktur (Einzelplan 12): about €38.6 billion in the 2025 draft, covering federal roads, rail subsidies to DB InfraGO, and digital-infrastructure programmes [1].
• Bildung und Forschung (Einzelplan 30): approximately €20.9 billion in the 2025 draft [1].

Why these numbers matter to a citizen#

Taken together, social spending + defence + debt service + transport + education add up to more than 70 percent of the entire federal budget. Everything else — foreign affairs, interior, justice, environment, agriculture, family affairs, health, culture — shares the remaining slice. When a politician promises a 'new programme' worth several billion euros, it has to come from this remaining slice, from higher taxes, from new debt, or from reallocating one of the big five.

Sources#

[1] Bundesministerium der Finanzen, Bundeshaushalt 2024 and Entwurf Bundeshaushalt 2025 (Regierungsentwurf, July 2024), https://www.bundeshaushalt.de (Tier 1 — official government data).

[2] Deutscher Bundestag, Haushaltsgesetz 2024, BGBl. I, February 2024 (Tier 1 — primary legal source; enacted spending authority: approx. €476.8 billion).

[3] Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis), Öffentliche Finanzen, series Fachserie 14, https://www.destatis.de (Tier 1).

[4] Bundesministerium der Verteidigung, Sondervermögen Bundeswehr — Wirtschaftsplan, https://www.bmvg.de (Tier 1).